


The Tower (XVI)

by MerryContrary



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Lyrium Withdrawal, M/M, Mistaken Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-12
Updated: 2015-02-12
Packaged: 2018-03-11 23:47:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3337154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MerryContrary/pseuds/MerryContrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian knows that all of this is wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tower (XVI)

Dorian knows he is wrong.

He should be forming regrets, making absolutions. He should be murmuring apologies or at least excuses. He should be doing all of it on his knees, penitent, begging for a forgiveness that he does not deserve.

The cold stones are quiet. Birds and dragons both sleep on and here at the top of Skyhold’s tower the only sound is from the hushed, creaking song of worn leather as patrols make their rounds outside, too far away to intervene. 

Dorian knows that all of this is wrong.

The soft flicker of yellow candlelight in the tower had been an invitation against his insomnia and the dark mountains, an angry white-capped sea waiting to break over Skyhold. Golden halla fur had not been warm enough for the climb up stone steps.

Dorian has no apologies because he watches the reach of moonlight across pale skin, porcelain in the white glow, fragile and priceless, and has never been ashamed to admit he relishes such finery. He is not a bad person; his sarcasm is a deflection, not an attack, his wealth is never flaunted—not much—and there is nothing in his life that he would regret were he to meet his end tomorrow. Dorian cannot think himself a monster. He hates his father for condemning him for choices outside of his control but now he makes damning motions with fingertips that won’t listen to him if he tried and he can’t hate himself the same way. 

The body beneath his hands arches and accompanying the motion is a voice low, the pull of it as inexorable as the tide. Dorian leans in and breathes in the shape of the words from parted lips. _Please_ , they say. _Maker, please._

_Please._

The words feel like lies; they taste like wine. Dorian presses his mouth down and kisses the lips silent, scrapes them clean. And it amazes him that a mouth so used to the rough bark of command can be so yielding, can be so taken advantage of. He cannot believe that it is all a madness, that this submission a mere symptom of withdrawal. No. 

Cullen is too superb like this for it to be any less than held deep in his bones, marrow and soul.

If sins were to be counted, Dorian would carry an entire book for this night alone. He found a man fighting demons invisible to all but himself and knowing he wore another face, used hands to allay the fears instead of words. Instead of any honest means. Cullen, with his permanently square shoulders; Cullen with his sure determination; Cullen with his absolute black and his shining white. All of it, brought low by the lack of something as small as a vial of blue liquid. Brought to begging, and grasping, and spreading his naked thighs as if the hands that touch him might actually save him. Instead of counting his own sins, Dorian counts Cullen’s scars by touch and lets Cullen writhe as if he were the sinner.

Strong fingers, callused beyond any sane man’s desire to wield a weapon, slide and bite into Dorian’s shoulders. Dorian hisses and Cullen laughs, the sound bright, and breathless, and Maker save him. 

Surely no one else will.

Not everything he wants to do is done. He is no monster, to leave questions for the next day’s consciousness in the form of new aches and territorial marks. Tomorrow Cullen will not be his. Tonight Cullen is not his, even though Dorian has his mouth full of the man’s cock. 

Moans sound like they hurt; it may be the truth. Excising demons is never a pleasant experience and the organ on Dorian’s tongue is flaccid even though Cullen’s fingers hold him down, pull at his hair, beg for more. Dorian pries with tongue and lips and he himself is flush and tight against his breeches. He feels desperate but calm because desperation, that old ally, has been with him since Cullen had knocked him back into the desk and the candle, toppling, had fallen to guttering against the floor. He makes sure to keep stubble from dragging against fair skin as his face is caught between large thighs, lest proof linger.

Let him be another invisible demon that Cullen has fought off. Let this be a victory.

Perhaps Dorian only thinks it because such a thing would absolve him. Should Cullen’s shoulders prove a little lower tomorrow, his mind a little more at ease, then who could say that Dorian has not helped him? Maybe they’ll sit together across a chessboard and Cullen’s eyes will finally look rested again, perhaps he’ll put up a better game than he has in the past week. Isn’t that worth this? 

Isn’t it worth quieting Cullen’s pleas with fingers and turning the man so that his hands creak around the wooden frame of the bed instead of against Dorian’s skull? Cullen won’t remember except for the lightness that comes with tomorrow but Dorian will never forget the shape of Cullen’s spine against his lips. 

He is gentle, careful. He is mindful of wrapping a hand around the man’s cock even as he buries his face in Cullen’s ass. Cullen tastes like sweat, the deep salt of a dehydrated man. He trains too hard, fights too fiercely, the skin under his eyes raw and heavy even by moonlight. Dorian would like to exhaust him completely, to grant him at least the sleep he needs. Cullen’s knees slip across the tangled bed sheets, his toes curl and catch. It is too cold in this tower for such a show of skin but who would cover such a glorious sight? Dorian pushes his tongue deeper still. 

There has been no sort of decent release for Dorian since joining the Inquisition, nothing that could be called anything more than perfunctory, and he is alarmingly short-lived with his tongue curled inside of the Inquisition’s Commander. His hips stutter and his breath catches and he does not care that he’ll have to spend a part of tomorrow scrubbing out his breeches. He doesn’t care about anything except the spread of Cullen across the sheets, flushed and shivering, and the deep, sated feeling seeping through his own limbs. 

He knows he’ll sleep, now.

Blankets of fur are hoisted from the floor and pulled up over the bed and the man and Dorian untangles his cloak from a chair, not as grateful for its meager warmth as he was before. The darkness hardly feels as cold as it had.

“Mage?” The naming is a whisper, a moan that stirs the hairs on the back of Dorian’s neck and stops his boots on the stairs. He reminds himself that the right thing to do would be to form apologies, or excuses. He has a few of each on his tongue, clever as always; when he swallows them back they are not bitter. 

“No, my dear.” There will be no excuses tonight. Dorian pulls the halla a little more tightly against his neck and smiles. “Just your imagination.”


End file.
